Throughout his 18 year career in the NBA Metta World Peace played for 6 teams, was an All Star and became an NBA champion in 2010 as a member of the Los Angeles Lakers. He was drafted in the first round in 1999 by the Chicago Bulls. As a player, he was always an elite defender. But he had a reputation for losing his cool. When it worked, it made him passionate, tough and nearly impossible to get past. But when didn't, things went south easily.

In 2004, at a game in Detroit, a hard foul between players escalated into an all out brawl between players and fans. The incident, now infamous, was called the Malice at the Palace. He's written a memoir about his life: "No Malice: My Life in Basketball." In it, he recounts his triumphs and shortcomings, including, of course, that incident in Detroit.

He's one of the most fascinating people in basketball. This week, we cover a lot of ground with him - the highs and lows of his career - the championships, the fights. He'll also talk about what it was like to grow up in Queensbridge, the biggest public housing complex in the country. And, of course, if you're a fan of his you've probably heard the story about the first time he met Kobe Bryant in a shower - but did it really go down the way people say? The answer might surprise you.

The Song That Changed My Life, with Cut Chemist: Park Bench People by Freestyle Fellowship

Lucas McFadden is a DJ and producer, best known for co-founding the iconic underground hip-hop group Jurassic 5. If you ever catch him spinning records on a turntable he does so under the name Cut Chemist.

He'll tell us about "Park Bench People" by Freestyle Fellowship. The Fellowship was a boundary-defying underground crew fronted by MC's Myka 9 and Aceyalone. Find out how the song changed his idea of what hip-hop could be.

Cut Chemist's first record in 12 years drop earlier this year, it's called "Die Cut." The album features collaborations with musicians like Chali 2na, Mr. Lif, Biz Markie, and his hero - Myka 9.

This week, Jesse pays tribute to Ed Roberts, a pioneering leader in the disability rights movement. In the late 80's, Jesse's father worked for Ed, and they were best friends. Jesse reflects on his dad, and his dad's friend, and those memories from his childhood.

H. Jon Benjamin on his new book 'Failure is an Option: An Attempted Memoir'

If you don't know H. Jon Benjamin you certainly might recognize his voice. He's best known for his extensive voice work. Over the years, he's played slackers like Ben, the son of Dr. Katz, in "Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist;" and the hilarious Coach McGuirk and Jason on "Home Movies." Most recently, you know him as the voice of Sterling Archer from FX's "Archer," and as Bob from Fox's "Bob's Burgers."

Long before his recognizable voice work Benjamin's comedy career began in Boston. A lot of his earlier work was often done in groups or duos and emphasized on improvised comedy. He was part of "Tinkle," a live show combining music and sketches co-hosted by David Cross and Todd Barry. Then, there was the popular UCB show "The Midnight Pajama Jam," in New York City with Jon Glaser. Seriously, have you ever seen The Fuggedabuddies?

He just wrote a new book called "Failure is an Option: An Attempted Memoir." In it, he recounts a lot of failures, which eventually opened the door to success. He talks about failures in family, in work, and in serving fajitas.

This week, he talks with Jesse about how the start of his career in comedy meant the end for his parents family business, the differences between voicing Bob and Archer, and an honest look at his ebay purchase history. Plus, he'll reflect on his improv and stage days, and why he felt more comfortable performing with other people.

Sara Driver on her new film 'Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat'

Then, filmmaker Sara Driver, she just directed a new documentary called "Boom For Real: The Late Teenage years of Jean-Michel Basquiat." The film explores the early career of the great artist through people who knew him. Sara was one of those people. And she remembers what it was like to live near the Lower East Side of New York in the late 70's. She interviewed more than a dozen people who knew Basquiat personally.

In the film, we hear from people like Alexis Adler. Now she's an embryologists, and but back then she was photographer. She was a good friend of Basquiat and often would go to concerts at local clubs in New York. She helped Basquiat find his first apartment when he was struggling to find a place to live. Other people featured in the film include Lee Quiñones. Lee is known for his colorful murals and bold wild style of graffiti on New York Subway trains. He talks about the brilliance of Basquiat's simple graffiti art techniques. The film also explore the bubbling downtown art scene, and music venues like the Mudd Club where Basquiat's band Grey played their first shows.

"Boom For Real" kind of tells two stories: there's Basquiat's - who shows up in archival footage but never speaks. And there's New York City's. Pre-9/11, pre-Reagan, pre-real estate boom. Boom for Real strikes a careful balance between nostalgia and danger.

Sara Driver will talk about how she scored so much archival footage of Basquiat doing mundane things. Plus, she'll talk about a Whole Foods that opened up in neighborhood a couple years ago. She'll tell us why she loves it, but why it made her miss the old New York.

It's a different one this week. It's not a film, tv show, or album recommendation. But please, enjoy this delicious recipe. Jesse will tell you how to make the best mint chocolate chip cookies you've ever had.

This week, we dig into the archives to bring you an episode from long before the podcast joined Max Fun. We're keeping it in the family though, we'll revisit our conversation with Jesse Thorn ("Bullseye," "Jordan, Jesse, Go!") on the classic episode "Mr. Plow." We're also announcing that we're adding episodes from the archives to the Max Fun website. Make sure you tune in till the end of this episode; Julia, Allie, and Jesse will sing the Mr. Plow commercial theme song. You don't wanna miss it!

Robert Smigel is probably best known as the voice of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. The creation of Triumph was conceived while Smigel was a head writer at "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" in the late 90's.

Triumph's debut was in a recurring comedy skit about unusually talented dogs at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. Triumph performed alongside dog sock puppets who played banjos, some performed magic tricks, and there was even plate spinners. With a cigar in his mouth Triumph closed out the sketch with his now iconic brand of comedy. Over the years, the character has returned to make fun of Star Wars nerds, start feuds with rappers like Eminem at the VMAs, and more recently heckling politicians for a hilarious election special.

Smigel spent decades on Saturday Night Live as a writer, producer, and sometimes even had recurring roles -- he played Carl in the Bill Swerski's Superfans sketches. That's the one where the Chicago sports fans talk about their love of "DA Bears." Robert also the creator of an SNL staple – "Saturday TV Funhouse" – the recurring skit on SNL which features cartoons. Including: The Ambiguously Gay Duo, X-Presidents, and The All-New Adventures of Mr. T.

Now, Robert Smigel's a writer and director. Together with Adam Sandler and Chris Rock he made a new movie called "The Week Of." In it, Sandler plays Kenny, a working class guy from Long Island who can't really afford the wedding he'd like to give his daughter. Chris Rock plays Kirby, a heart surgeon from LA and the father of the groom. Kirby has the money to help out with everything, but Sandler's character has hard a time accepting it.

Robert talks to Jesse about what it's like to be a father, and why he isn't sure his kids will find pleasure in the comedy he does as Triumph much longer. Plus, he breaks down what really happened when he was showrunning "The Dana Carvey" show.

If you're a fan of Gillian Jacobs, it's probably because of her work in television. For six seasons, Gillian Jacobs played Britta Perry on the hit comedy show "Community." On the surface it was a show about a study group at a community college who are unlikely friends. But in a way "Community" was a television show about television and film conventions. It's full of meta-humor, parodies and messed around with typical television tropes. She also played Mimi-Rose on HBO's Girls. And on Netflix's Love, which just wrapped up its third and final season, she starred as Mickey.

In her latest film "Ibiza," Gillian plays Harper. She's a quiet New Yorker in her early 30s who works at a PR firm. Her life changes when she gets sent on an important work trip to Barcelona, Spain. Harper brings along her two party animal friends - Nikki, played by Vanessa Bayer and Leah, played by Phoebe Robinson. The three friends take a trip to Ibiza, hundreds of miles away from where she's supposed to be. What could go wrong? Well, the film turns into a wild ride.

Gillian tells us why Harper is the first character she's played that is most like her. Plus, she tell us how she found herself in high school theater.

It's hard to make an interesting biopic about anything. Now, imagine having to make a film based around the last twenty-five years of the life and career of painter J. M. W. Turner. It has to be tough, right? Making brushstrokes and landscape paintings interesting … well, director Mike Leigh nails it with the help of Timothy Spall's portrayal of Turner.

It's hard to imagine that Neko Case wasn't always a singer. She started as a drummer in punk bands, swept up in the excitement of the Pacific Northwest music scene in the mid 90's. For the past two decades, she's been producing exceptional music as a solo artist as well as a collaborator with the indie-rock band, The New Pornographers.

Neko Case sat down with Jesse, and told us why she has trouble listening to her own music if she's not playing it live, and how the loss of her parents shaped her creative work.

When she spoke with Bullseye in 2016 she had just released "Truckdriver, Gladiator, Mule" a vinyl box set featuring all her solo work. You'll have a new album by Neko Case to add you collection very soon. "Hell-On" will be her first solo album in five years, and it drops on June 1st.

She's hitting the road this summer. You can check out her tour dates here.

Thao Nguyen's career in music began in her mother's laundromat. She spent her teens counting change for customers and writing songs whenever she had the chance. Her musical influences include country, folk and hip-hop, and her music is incredibly personal and raw - take, for example, "A Man Alive." It was her most recent album as the front woman of the band Thao and the Get Down Stay Down.

It takes its inspiration from Thao's complicated relationship with her father. Their estrangement began when Thao was first beginning to write music in that laundromat. The music comes from a dark place in her life, but still manages to feel vibrant and full of wonder.

When she sat down with Jesse in 2016 she talked about the importance of her collaboration with producer Merrill Garbus in the making of that album, the diversity of her early musical influences and her struggle to fit in while growing up as a Vietnamese-American.

She'll be embarking on a big tour alongside Neko Case. Check out the tour dates here.

This week, we're doing something a little different on Bullseye. It's been 10 years since HBO's brilliant crime drama "The Wire" ended its run. We're dedicating the entire episode to the groundbreaking show. "The Wire" wasn't just another cop show -- it was an investigation of contemporary America that uses the drug trade as a lens to get at even larger issues. "The Wire" is just kind of setup like a novel -- its got its own idiom, its own pacing. And even ten years later the show is still incredibly relevant and riveting to watch.

We'll revisit an interview from 2008, which features two greats from the ensemble cast of "The Wire." Wendell Pierce (Detective Bunk Moreland) and Andre Royo (Bubbles) talked with Jesse about their time as actors on "The Wire." They discuss what it was like to authentically portray life in poor Baltimore neighborhoods, and how the show helped them launch their careers in an industry where the roles they often auditioned for were so polarizing.

Plus, we'll hear from author Jonathan Abrams. Jonathan is an award-winning writer for The Bleacher Report and he's written for Grantland, The LA Times, The New York Times and more. He became obsessed with HBO's "The Wire" when a friend kept bugging him to watch it. He finally gave it a shot during the show's 4th season that aired in 2006.

He just wrote "All the Piece Matter: The Inside Story of The Wire." It's an oral history of the show as told by the actors, writers, directors, and other people involved in its creation. He'll tell us about the painstaking efforts the show creator, David Simon; took to make sure the show got Baltimore right.

You can check out and share Wendell Pierce and Andre Royo's interview from the archives on YouTube here. And listen to Jonathan Abrams segment here!

This episode of Bullseye will include some light spoilers about "The Wire." If you haven't seen it by now… what are you waiting for! You've been warned.

Padma Lakshmi on her childhood in India, Top Chef, and her book The Encyclopedia of Herbs & Spices

Padma Lakshmi has gone through many career changes during her time in the public eye. She began her career as a model turned actress, then became a writer, and now hosts TV’s Top Chef on Bravo. She has written two cookbooks, a memoir, and now The Encyclopedia of Herbs & Spices.
Padma and Jesse talk about cultural differences she had to reckon with growing up between India and the United States, her role on Top Chef, and her new book The Encyclopedia of Herbs & Spices.

Comedian and writer Laurie Kilmartin is probably best known as one of the finalists on the 7th season of Last Comic Standing. She has also written 2 books and has been nominated for a Primetime Emmy award. When Laurie's 83 year old father was diagnosed with cancer she had to take time off from her dream job as a staff writer on Conan O’Brian’s late night show. She flew up to visit her father in Northern California as much as she could. During the months of her father's declining health, she took to Twitter writing jokes about her experience of losing a parent to cancer.

She talks to Jesse about her comedy special called 45 Jokes About My Dead Dad. She gets candid about what it’s like to lose a parent and how instrumental Twitter was in coming to grips during the process.

Rachel Bloom on her love of musical theater and gaining confidence in Hollywood.

Rachel Bloom is a comedian whose humor often involves her bursting into song. She embraces the classic tropes of the Hollywood musical comedy adding her own contemporary twist on her CW show, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. The show has earned her a Golden Globe and a Critics Choice Award.

A veteran of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, Bloom has also worked on television shows Allen Gregory and Robot Chicken. But it was her absurdist and hilarious musical videos that first brought her to the industry's attention. The video for her song, Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury went viral and earned Bloom a Hugo Award nomination. She has released two albums including Please Love Me andSuck It, Christmas!!! (A Chanukah Album).

Rachel Bloom sat down with Jesse to talk about her love for musical theater, gaining self-confidence in Hollywood and the logistics involved in being lifted in the air in a giant pretzel.

Gloria Calderon Kellett and Mike Royce on their new show One Day At A Time

Gloria Calderon Kellett has been in show business as a writer, producer, and actor for almost two decades. She began her career writing on Andy Richter’s show Quintuplets. She also worked on How I Met Your Mother and Rules of Engagement. When Norman Lear, the legendary TV producer approached her about doing a reboot of One Day at a Time - his 1970s hit sitcom - she jumped at the chance.

She was joined by Mike Royce, a veteran TV producer of shows like Everybody Love Raymond and Men of a Certain Age, and Gloria. The two tell Jesse about how they began to conceptualize the new show, how Gloria avoided being being labeled as the "latina writer" during her career, and how they approached writing about marginalized communities in a sitcom format.

First time Academy Award nominee Laurie Metcalf on her long career in theatre and television

You probably know Laurie Metcalf from her role as Roseanne's sister, Jackie, in the TV Sitcom Roseanne. Over the course of nine seasons, Laurie's portrayal of Jackie was warm and kind-hearted but a tad bit neurotic and always on edge. Laurie won two Emmys for that role on Roseanne. Before her career in television Laurie got her start in theater as a founding member of the legendary Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago. At the Steppenwolf she worked with the likes of John Malkovich, Terry Kinney and Gary Sinise.

This year, she's up for the best supporting actress Oscar for her role in Lady Bird. It's her first ever nomination for an Oscar. In Lady Bird she plays Marion McPherson, the mother of Christine "Lady Bird" McPherson. The McPhersons live in Sacramento and the whole movie is set in 2002. It's almost like a period piece from the Bush years. As "Lady Bird" approaches the end of her high school career their relationship is tested. The film examines their mother-daughter dynamic in a very realistic way -- it's messy, it's complicated, but there's also a lot of motherly love involved even if Marion doesn't exactly show it.

Jesse talks with Laurie about her long career and the parallels between her life and the mother she plays in Lady Bird. Plus, Laurie talks about what it was like to be reunited with the cast of Roseanne for the new television reboot after more than 20 years.

You can see Laurie Metcalf in upcoming redition of Edward Albee's Three Tall Women this spring on Broadway. And Lady Bird is still playing in select theaters.

Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez have written dozens of songs for movie and TV. Together the married couple have won award after award for their co-written songs. You've certainly heard the song they co-wrote called "Let It Go" from Disney's Frozen. The song was huge success. The theatrical version of the song reached #5 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song also won an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2014 and a Grammy in 2015 for Best Song Written for Visual Media.

Robert's also written music for The Book of Mormon, Avenue Q, Scrubs and more. He's actually one of only 12 people to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Award. Kristen and Robert are up for another Oscar this year -- this time for the co-written song "Remember Me" from Disney's Coco.

They talk to Jesse about the process behind writing that song, how they managed to sneak in adult jokes in children's songs, and how they find time in their busy schedules to be good parents, too. Plus, Jesse asked them about the first song they co-wrote together called "The Wide, Wide World," which is a song from Bear in the Big Blue House a television show from the early 2000's that aired on Playhouse Disney.

You don't want to miss it, the song is sung by a gang of puppet animals including a bear, a green lemur, and two purple otters. They had to rewrite the song about five times because they couldn't quite get the otter jokes right!

David Wain got his first big break very early on in his life as a co-founder of the MTV sketch comedy show "The State." He then went on to direct "Role Models" and the cult classic "Wet Hot American Summer," but the transition from hit network television show to popular movie director was neither clear nor direct. For a long time after "The State," Wain was down on his luck - he didn't have another job and was not being asked to work on anything else. Wain tells Jesse about his time in therapy and how that helped him plan his next move toward filmmaking, which ultimately, led him to where he is today.

His latest Netflix movie "A Futile and Stupid Gesture," is about the successful, yet tragic life of Wain's own comedic hero Doug Kenney. Kenney founded The National Lampoon magazine and made the movies "Animal House" and "Caddyshack" - two movies that had huge impacts on fans of comedy everywhere, including Wain.

Stuart Murdoch of Belle and Sebastian on his latest EPs "How to Solve Our Human Problems"

The last installment of indie pop band Belle and Sebastian's EP trilogy "How to Solve Our Human Problems" is out this week. Stuart Murdoch is the band's founder and lead vocalist. Belle and Sebastian's records are on hundreds of top 10 lists and their second album "If You're Feeling Sinister" is considered by many critics to be one of the best albums of the '90's.

Murdoch admits that when he was young becoming a musician was never part of his life plan. His path to founding Belle and Sebastian actually began with an illness. In the 1980's, Murdoch first discovered his continued struggle with chronic fatigue syndrome. He dropped out of college, spent a lot of time in the hospital, and moved back in with his parents. It was there in the quiet moments that he began to write tunes on his piano. On the suggestion of his doctor, he joined a class for unemployed musicians where he met Stuart David, Belle and Sebastian's co-founder.

Murdoch also talks with Jesse about his passion for baseball, why many of the songs in the latest EPs are ones your uncle would want to dance to at a wedding, and how his interest in Buddhism and meditation play a part in the overall concept of "How to Solve Our Human Problems."